Issa Pliyev

Issa Alexandrovich Pliyev (25 November 1903-2 February 1979) was a General of the Army of the Soviet Red Army who commanded the Soviet 13th Army during World War II.

Biography
Issa Alexandrovich Pliyev was born on 25 November 1903 in Stariy Batakoyurt, Russian Empire (present-day North Ossetia, Russia) to a family of ethnic Ossetians. Pliyev entered the Red Army in 1922 and joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1926 after becoming a cavalry officer.

Pliyev was in command of the 3rd Guards Cavalry Division at the time of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, and his army fought at the Battle of Moscow and the Battle of Stalingrad against Nazi Germany and the Axis Powers. Later, he would lead a cavalry corps under the 3rd Ukrainian Front and 1st Belorussian Front, and his cavalry-mechanized group took part in the Soviet offensives into Eastern Europe in 1944 and 1945. Pliyev ended the European war in Czecholsovakia before taking part in the Manchurian Offensive against the Japanese Kwantung Army.

After the end of World War II, Pliyev commanded Asian formations of the Soviet Army, and he put down the Novocherkassk locomotive factory strike in June 1962, leading to the deaths of 26 protesters and the injury of 87. He also led the 47,000 Soviet troops stationed on the island of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and he would have led a Soviet-Cuban army group in the case of a United States invasion. Pliyev retired in 1968 and died eleven years later.